First day at my host school!

7/14/2010 - 5:30pm

Today was the first day for me at KV no. 2, Delhi Cantt, which is located a pretty far distance from the hotel (luckily there are others working at schools nearby, so we can share transportation!) and it was A GREAT DAY!

First of all, in case you were wondering, Indian schools are VERY DIFFERENT from American schools! I could give you a chronological summary of how my day went, but it makes more sense to just focus on the differences between the schools I am used to learning/teaching at, and the school where I'll be spending the next month.

Difference #1: Gender segregation
-Just after picking me up from the principal's office, Mrs. Kumar took me into the Ladies' Staff Lounge and introduced me to some of the other female teachers and explained how my day would go.
-Boys and girls sit on either side of the room, at double-desks. Boys do NOT share the double desks with girls!

Difference #2: Snacks
-There's a kid at the school whose sole job seems to be to bring samosas and other snacks, as well as piping hot delicious chai, to any teacher who asks. And the teachers ask a lot. Whenever I was taken into a sit-down with faculty, chai and samosas were offered to me. I had to end up turning down the samosas because I was too full! And anybody who knows me knows I could eat samosas all day long.
-After students were dismissed, teachers had to stick around to do grading or other duties. The ladies all have lunch in the staff room and I was offered some of everybody's food. A cracker here, a cookie there, dal, etc. Again, I was TOO FULL!

Difference #3: Setup
-There are several classes of kids who stay in the same room all day while the teachers rotate. There is a science room and a computer lab for the older kids, so they get to see some movement, but the vast majority stay in the same spot all day.
-The school is NOT air conditioned. There is plenty of ventilation due to the open plan of the school, and in a normal size room there are 6-8 ceiling fans running. So although I was hot, I was not totally uncomfortable.
-The classes are very short: 30-35min long. As is the school day: 7am-noonish.
-The classes are very big: about 40 students per class.

Difference #4: Manners
-Students stand whenever a teacher enters or leaves a room, and say "Good morning sir/ma'am" or "Thank you sir/ma'am" to the teacher as well.
-Students are incredibly well-behaved and polite otherwise!

Difference #5: Planning
-KV schools have a centralized curriculum which is pretty much scripted but nobody seems to complain about the scriptedness of it. There are standardized exams every few weeks, containing material that is covered in the curriculum.
-Teachers aren't expected to really create their own instructional materials. There's a textbook, a copybook where they respond to reading comprehension questions and take notes, and some classes have a secondary resource textbook. Every so often the teachers collect copybooks and grade the work, then hand the copybooks back.
-Teachers don't have to produce weekly lesson plans (as far as I can tell) and are responsible for making sure the material is covered in the time given before an exam.

Overall, a huge learning experience and a great day. I am really looking forward to working more with the kids and getting to know them better. I will be taking an 8th grade English class, a 9th grade English class, and a spoken English class. The spoken English doesn't have a curriculum I have to follow, so I'll get to do what I want; the other 2 classes will be taught from the curriculum but I hope to do some other fun activities too, to give the kids an experience of what American teaching is like (while still preparing them for their standardized exams!)

Tomorrow morning I will be addressing the school during their morning assembly. I am introducing myself and saying a little bit about what I'll be doing at the school. I'll be speaking to a few hundred kids, maybe even 1,000 (the school is huge!) so I am a little nervous.

So right now I'm exhausted… I'm going to play around on the internet for a bit before dinner and then hopefully get to bed nice and early. I'll be getting up very early here in India- the upside to this is that I'll have afternoons basically free to do what I want.

But before I wind up this entry, some funny things from today:
-I got asked for my autograph by a student, and then THE ENTIRE CLASS wanted my autograph in their notebooks. Or on a hand. Or on both hands.
-I asked the kids to guess my age and they guessed right :(
-A student asked me to sing a song (in case you were wondering, I chose "Happy Birthday" because it was the first song that came to mind)
-A teacher came in and yelled at one of the classes for chewing gum and leaving it under the desks… some things are global, right?